The first time I missed saxophonist Sonny Rollins, or, should I say, bungled a golden opportunity to catch the jazz god descend for one of his occasional concert appearances, was the summer of 1985, in New York City. He gave an unaccompanied outdoor performance in the sculpture garden at the…
At a time when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is lobbying Congress to pass a law that would make all recording artists nothing more than “workers for hire” (essentially making them even less than a label employee), it’s refreshing to see there are still people like Dan and…
For more than a decade, the Jungle Brothers have remained members of hip-hop’s original tribe. For the hardcore hip-hop heads who have been fans of the Jungle Brothers since their classic 1988 debut, Straight Out the Jungle, news of their recent collaboration with a U.K. artist better known in club…
If the new CD by guitar troublemaker Marc Ribot and his band Los Cubanos Postizos coheres better than the “fake Cubans” eponymous 1997 debut, that’s because Atlantic Records originally signed them after they had played just three gigs together. The group’s concept of parsing the music of Cuban composer and…
Robbie Fulks is the rarest of pop-music commodities: a wiseass singer/songwriter who’s actually funny. Over the course of four longplayers, Fulks has brought some much-needed comedic vibrancy to the boot-gazing domain of altcountry, skewering Nashville’s country-music mainstream (“Fuck This Town”) and crafting love songs that are both bitter (“Forgotten but…
Half a century is a long time to be sitting on the dock of the key — actually on the edge of Shrimpers’ Lagoon on Virginia Key. But that’s how long Jimbo’s (follow the road across from the seaquarium parking lot off the Rickenbacker Cswy. or call 305-361-7026) has been…
Depending on your perspective, Miami’s Winter Music Conference (WMC) is either the annual gathering of the electronic dance-music industry for a week of high-powered networking and taste-making, or it’s simply an excuse for hordes of pasty Europeans and pale Midwesterners to hit South Beach on the corporate tab and get…
These days it’s no different for 34-year-old Virginia Rodrigues than for any other international celebrity. The fame, the concerts, the glowing press, the people in her hometown who once ignored her and now court her favor. “Everybody in Bahia has heard about me now,” she says via phone from her…
Despite the intensity of its rabid cult following and the countless hits it produced in the Fifties and Sixties, doo-wop remains the most overlooked and critically maligned facet of early rock and roll. The recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction of the Moonglows (only the second doo-wop ensemble…
Clubland is all electric this week for the Winter Music Conference. The Beach is saturated with DJs, about a zillion of whom are listed on this page and the next, so take your pick. (Plus see “Music” for more in-depth coverage of select events.) But if you don’t feel like…
The tattoos marbling Patrick Shannon’s arms offer glimpses of his past. The one with Bugs Bunny banging on a drum is emblematic, he says, of his postadolescent years in a speed-metal band. The one with the words Semper Fidelis illustrates his stint in the U.S. Marine Corps. The one with…
He’s easy to take for granted, the weird-voiced singer named Willie Nelson. He’s been at it for so long it’s hard to imagine a time when there wasn’t a Willie Nelson around, writing some of country music’s most enduring classics, revolutionizing the artistic and commercial possibilities of honky-tonk, forging a…
Formed more than two decades ago, the Mekons have established a rabid following, pursued whatever they pleased with no regard for prevailing trends, consistently changed the face of music with ideas and execution that took years for anyone else to follow, and had absolutely more fun on tour than just…
Franco Luambo Makiadi, better known as Franco, was the most influential musician in the history of African pop music. But he doesn’t have a single American-label record in print. Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, the magnificent 2096-page tome edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry…
After the opening title track of Morphine’s now posthumous studio release fades into darkness, this much becomes clear: Band leader Mark Sandman’s unexpected death onstage at a European festival last summer mercilessly pulled the plug at a pivotal moment in the group’s career. The unusually constructed trio of Sandman on…
Are you sick of going out to the Grove or South Beach? Why can’t the party atmosphere in Miami feel like a real city? Sure we have the Wallflower Gallery downtown. It’s a cool space and it features great bands, but the strongest thing to drink in there is coffee…
In polite Colombian society, well-meaning mothers tell their children in hushed tones: “Don’t say negro, my dear; say moreno.” One word means black. The other means dark. Jairo Varela, leader of Grupo Niche, Colombia’s most successful salsa orchestra, has no patience for such fine distinctions. After spending three years in…
Bruce Springsteen’s career, onstage and on record, arguably is the most consistently brilliant of any artist of the past 30 years. But his latest tour is unlike the recent embarkments by rock’s other aging legends: the biannual Rolling Stones and Who wingdings, or the contrived revenue-raking regroupings of Fleetwood Mac,…
What would you say if two men approached you on the street and asked if they could drill a hole into your head to record your thoughts? This is the kind of situation that Jim Coyle and Mal Sharpe inflicted on scores of innocent pedestrians as the pair walked around…
After taking a spin through Tommy Womack’s latest album, Stubborn, it’s obvious to see the guy can do practically anything. The Nashville-based wordsmith has the heart of a rocker, the fatalism of a seasoned troubadour, a wit that rivals that of Bap Kennedy or Robbie Fulks, the weird streak of…
“To the left/Don’t slow down now,” commands Nigeria’s Femi Kuti. “To the right/Don’t come too fast.” The lyrics, announced authoritatively in “Beng Beng Beng,” the catchiest, most pop-oriented song on Kuti’s Shoki Shoki, well describes the basic feel of the musician’s latest attempt to breach American ears: an energetic display…
If you’re not a tourist, the thought of going to the Hard Rock Café (401 Biscayne Blvd; 305-377-3110) in Bayside Market Place can sound vile. But on Thursday the Hard Rock makes it a little easier to stomach with Bandemonium 2000, featuring Marcy Playground and locals Darwin’s Waiting Room, Jade…
